Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles: Race, Rhetoric, and the Prosecution of an Early Christian Movement

by Jeremy Williams

In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the Book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons – because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how Critical Race Theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enables a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and socio-political processes that criminalize. Williams' study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.

248 pages, Hardcover

Published October 26, 2023

About the author

There is more than one author with this name.

Jeremy Williams has a B.A. in History from Michigan State University and is currently pursuing an M.A. in African American Studies. He is the author of Detroit: The Black Bottom Community and has also published The Rise and Fall of Black Bottom, 1914-1951: A Social, Cultural, and Political Analysis of an African American Community in the Michigan State University Journal of History.

His first book, Push Nevahda and the Vicious Circle: scenes from a random life, is available at Amazon.com. In his spare time he writes (often under the pen name, Push Nevahda) for an online magazine, contributes weekly to a blog on romance and relationships, and has written cultural and political pieces for several newspapers. His hobbies include recording music, watching reruns of

Sanford & Son, and traveling. He is a member of the Detroit Writer's Guild.

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